Mozilla Firefox New Tab Page Has Cognitive Shield

Operating Systems

Around Firefox, Mozilla often directs projects to increase the functionality of a browser. In the Labs, the publisher introduces concepts and observed their reception by the public and corrections accordingly. Recently, Mozilla wondered what could well be made of the blank page that opens when you click on the establishment of a tab.

About two months ago, an extension test appeared to provide the opening of tabs what is now most often in Opera, Chrome and Safari. The thing is in most cases by posting the sites most often visited, the last added bookmarks, etc.. The purpose of Mozilla is to make service by posting a list of links that may be of interest to the user. The editor indicates that there is a paradox here: if the aim is to enable rapid access to a list of useful links, it is also not to disturb the "flow cognitive. The latter represents the natural sequence of actions, when everything seems logical and well organized. In order to address the paradox, Mozilla has set up a "cognitive shield.

How to locate the links to the most visited and / or news group? In case of displaying this information in a fixed location within the browser, they still represent a distraction to the eye and interrupt the flow. When the user uses the address bar to write something, it focuses on the outcome of this action, and does not wish in any sense be interrupted. If used against the mouse, it intends to use navigation via this tool. Using the mouse represents the starting point.

Using the mouse, the user can display the shield, which takes the form of eight discs arranged in a circle. Each disc contains the icon for the site, all representing the eight most visited sites: The problem is that for the moment, the extension has a very erratic operation. The idea probably deserves that are interested in, but Mozilla needs to review the operation of its prototype to make it really usable.

We’ve been iterating quickly over the last couple of weeks to define a potential new tab screen for Firefox.

The feedback for the last major iteration was largely positive, and it seems like we are on the right track. But we ran into a paradox.

We believe that the new tab screen should have two main functions: (A) To show you the sites you are most likely to be interested in going to, and (B) to not distract you. That’s the paradox: by design success is when the pages we show are maximally interesting/distracting, but an explicit goal is to not interrupt your flow.

This iteration focuses on solving that paradox by proposing a solution that we’ve dubbed “the cognitive shield”.

The Cognitive Shield
No matter where we put the links to your most visited sites (and their latest news), it always seemed to be a distraction, based upon our own perception and the feedback from thousands of testers. Given that the bulk of those testers are multi-tasking-adept early adopters, we’d expect that feedback to be even stronger from more mainstream users. Our original thought was to place the links along the bottom of the page — outside your foveal vision. In practice, the peripheral vision proved too strong, and the links still drew your eye and interrupted your cognitive flow.

The cognitive shield hides the distractions until you move the mouse. Then the links fade in quickly.

Here’s the thinking:
If you are typing a destination into the navigation bar, then your locus of attention is on the place you are trying to go — so we should stay politely out of your cognitive way. On the other hand, if you are using the mouse than you will probably benefit from the mouse-based navigation aid, so show it.

Whether you are using the mouse is a good indicator of whether you are in a cognitive flow or not. That realization resolves the paradox: the links are there when you need then, and not when you don’t.

The Design
The design of the cognitive shield is a ring of 8 circles, each containing one of your top-visited sites. We think of it as a personal watermark.

We went through a number of metaphors for the cognitive shield.
Instead of a metaphor which always strains — what symbol represents frequently used sites? — we went for an abstract glyph.

Known Bugs
There are a couple more features we’re in the process of adding. In particular: The ability to manually add a site is entirely broken. There’s no way to change the total number of frequently visited sites shown. There may still be encoding problems for non-roman scripts. Middle-clicks may be broken. The visual style needs a refresh. And the sites don’t remember their new positions post restart.

Hello , At least, it works in Mozilla! They do not just copy the competition, but offer innovations really thoughtful and useful. Ubiquity is on track for the semantic web, and this New Tab lays the foundations for an interface for thoughtful ergonomics. Because ergonomics is not just pretty buttons, but also use the software smoothly and without disrupting the brain that remain focused on the object of research rather than the technical means to achieve .

It is precisely the interest of this study ... First the circle slightly transparent does not attract the eye, but it allows passing the mouse over to go to sites that you visit the most (so in theory what you have more chance to go by opening a new tab). There are also display the last tab is cleared, so if you have selected a word, a button to do the research on this word in google.
The goal is to save a little time to the user.